Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story)

by Daniel Nayeri

But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw. Like you, I want a friend.

You don’t get to choose what you remember. A patchwork memory is the shame of a refugee. Did I tell you that already?

I HEARD THIS ONCE: When the immigrants came to America, they thought the streets would be paved with gold. But when they got here, they realized three things: The streets were not paved with gold. The streets were not paved at all. They were the ones expected to do the paving.

In Oklahoma, rich people have nice things. In Iran, they have nice spaces. Courtyards and fountain streams versus sports cars and mounted screens.

The legend of my mom is that she can’t be stopped. Not when you hit her. Not when a whole country full of goons puts her in a cage. Not even if you make her poor and try to kill her slowly in the little-by-little poison of sadness. And the legend is true. I think because she’s fixed her eyes on something beyond the rivers of blood, to a beautiful place on the other side. How else would anybody do it?

I think He’s a God who listens as if we are his most important children, and I think He speaks to tell us so.

The point of the Nights is that if you spend time with each other—if we really listen in the parlors of our minds and look at each other as we were meant to be seen—then we would fall in love. We would marvel at how beautifully we were made. We would never think to be villain kings, and we would never kill each other. Just the opposite. The stories aren’t the thing. The thing is the story of the story. The spending of the time. The falling in love.

My mom is the hero of this whole story, in case you were wondering. She always did what heroes do. The law that applied to her was the law of sacrificial love. The legend was unstoppable belief. The myth was the strongest person you have ever known. Not Hercules. Not Rostam. Not Jean Claude van Damme could protect and love as Sima, my mom, who was our champion, and who—like Jesus—took all the damage so we wouldn’t have to.

I DON’T KNOW HOW MY MOM was so unstoppable despite all that stuff happening. I dunno. Maybe it’s anticipation. Hope. The anticipation that the God who listens in love will one day speak justice. The hope that some final fantasy will come to pass that will make everything sad untrue. Unpainful. That across rivers of sewage and blood will be a field of yellow flowers blooming. You can get lost there and still be unafraid. No one will chase you off of it. It’s yours. A father who loves you planted it for you. A mother who loves you watered it. And maybe there are other people there, but they are all kind. Or better than that, they are right with each other. They treat each other right. If you have that, maybe you keep moving forward.

But what you believe about the future will change how you live in the present.